Manual

Main General Information Introduction

# Introduction to uDraw(Graph) 3.1

Welcome to uDraw(Graph). You can always go back to this page in a local online documentation by using menu Help/Introduction in uDraw(Graph).

uDraw(Graph) is a universal, generic visualization system for automatic generation of high-quality drawings of directed graphs. Graphs are widely used representations to show objects ("nodes") and relationships ("edges") between them. They are used to visualize hierarchies, dependency structures, networks, configurations, dataflows and so on. Despite this demand, graph visualization is not a regular feature in modern computer applications. So even today, users often have to deal with simple text interfaces or poor ad-hoc drawings of graphs, because high-quality graph layout is difficult and components for graph visualization are not the mainstream.

uDraw(Graph) provides full automatic graph layout with a rich set of node and edge styles like color, shape, pattern, icon, etc. The graphs are given in a special file format or can be created and sent by an arbitrary application program. But uDraw(Graph) can give you more than an ordinary layout library. With the intuitive user interface, powerful functions are immediately available to handle even complex graph visualizations. All these features can be controlled not only with the user interface, but also remotely using the application programming interface (API). So if you are a developer, it is easy for you to connect your proprietary application software to the uDraw(Graph) API. This way you do not have to deal with layout algorithms and computer graphics in order to equip your application with a graph visualization layer. With uDraw(Graph), users are able to control their connected application remotely by clicking and interacting with an intuitive graph visualization.

uDraw(Graph) is an established graph drawing solution, available since 1992 and used by many thousand customers and leading IT companies worldwide. The system is developed by University of Bremen, Germany. uDraw(Graph) can be downloaded on the web site at http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/uDrawGraph/en/download/.

What you should read next:

- Your are obliged to accept the license conditions before using the software.
- It is recommended to start by reading the Using the Online Documentation page.
- Be sure to take a look at the uDraw(Graph) Internet Resources about the mailinglist, user forum, defectlists and other services from University of Bremen.
- For getting an overview, continue by reading about Concepts of uDraw(Graph).
- Finally take a look at the Tutorial for a guided tour through uDraw(Graph).